


The Waves Still Break

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Getting Together, Multi, Non-Binary OC, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Slow Build, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28068717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: “It’s John B,” JJ says, and his voice is small, breathless, and he can’t tell what about John B - did they - did they find his body? After all this time - it’s been years - “He’s alive. Pope, man, he’salive.”--Pope heads to university. There's a lot to adjust to, but by far the hardest is the hollow left by JJ and Kie. And then John B rises from the dead.
Relationships: JJ/Kiara/Pope (Outer Banks)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	The Waves Still Break

**Author's Note:**

> There is some swearing in this, but otherwise all G rated. It didn't seem worth a T rating to me, but as a warning.

He’s been preparing for this his whole life. Since he first landed on what he wanted to do - a lightbulb moment at fourteen - he’s spent countless hours researching everything about college. He knows to read the syllabus twice. He knows to ask questions. He knows not to piss off the lecturer in case it follows him for the rest of the course. He knows to make an effort with the other kids, to keep his door open in halls for the first few weeks so he looks approachable. He thinks the worst thing in the world would be for the friendship groups to solidify and find himself on the outside.

All that, and he doesn’t think anyone ever mentioned how to pack up your childhood bedroom. How you’re supposed to look at the detritus of years and decide which memories get to come with you - and which get shed and left behind like nothing.

He’s never had a lot. They’re not rich - it’s not like he has stuff piled high or electronics he never uses. Everything here has a past, right down to the raggedy t-shirt Kie borrowed when she had that awful sunburn, or the shorts he lent JJ after he didn’t want to go home. 

He picks up a cheap flower lei he keeps draped on his bedpost. Kie gave them all one, after The Wreck had a party and the guests left them behind. She’d been outraged at the plastic waste and determined they’d be used; they had a campfire on the beach with stolen beer and toasted marshmallows, a hybrid kid/adult thing where the marshmallows made the beer sour and the beer made the marshmallows sickly. That was the night JJ kissed Kie. She’d pushed him away and JJ had laughed it off and Pope hadn’t realised until weeks later he’d actually meant it.

And the baseball he keeps on his desk. He picks it up, dirt ingrained in the stitching, and weighs it in his hand before tossing it back and forth a few times. He hadn’t had friends growing up. He was a quiet, bookish kid, and people respect his dad so he was never properly picked on, but for all the island’s class issues it’s not racism-free. No one wanted to hang out with the slightly weird, too-serious black boy. This baseball had flown across the playground, and he’d looked up just in time to catch it before it brained him.  _ This is where it starts _ , he remembers thinking, palm throbbing from the impact. Except John B had followed up the throw with a yell - an invitation and an apology - and somehow he’d found himself, ten years old and weedy, pitching for John B and that scary kid JJ.

Scary kid. It makes him laugh now; now he knows how to take JJ’s special brand of crazy and put a lid on it when it threatens them all. Back then they’d all thought JJ picked fights with older kids, that’s why he wore bruises like body art, and as they became the older kids, for too long it was easy to see his scraps with Rafe and Topper and assume the same.

He tucks the baseball in his duffel with a pile of socks.

\--

He mentions it to Kie when his bags are full; the strange sensation of packing up a life. She looks at him oddly, and shrugs. He knows she doesn’t understand; she’s off to community college on the mainland for environmental science. She’s got a term-time ferry pass and a strong book bag and she’ll be home in the evenings to bus tables and hang out with JJ. She’ll spend weekends surfing or out on the boat and nights sprawled on John B’s old sofa, because JJ has set up shop in the Chateau permanently. He wonders if JJ will try again now it’s just the two of them.

He’s happy he’s going away. It’s his dream.

He can’t help but be a little jealous.

\--

College is like another planet. 

There are people here way smarter than he is, for one, and the transition from big fish to middling fish in a fucking ocean of other fish is uncomfortable. He gawks and gives himself a week to adjust, then gets his head down. The scholarship he managed to scrape after ballsing up the big one is next to useless when you look at the total of what this is costing him - he’s gonna be in debt for fucking  _ ever _ \- but he can’t afford to lose it all the same.

He takes the advice of those hundreds of message boards though, and keeps his door open even when the music from down the hall is making his head split. It works, and over the space of the first term he fumbles hesitantly towards friendship with a few people; Sam, Leigh and Olly particularly.

New people… are weird. At home, he’s known everyone his whole life, except for the vacationers who drift in and drift out again; nameless, faceless. Here in Raleigh he could walk the streets for days and not see anyone he knows. No one knows him either. 

He thinks now and then about telling his story when conversation sags - what I did eighteen months ago - but the pain of John B is still too fresh. He tucks it away inside, locks it up with JJ and Kie as well, as if they need shielding from this strange new world. Sam asks him about his life before - they find island life fascinating, like it’s exotic - and he talks about his friends in the abstract. He doesn’t use their names. He’s not sure if it’s protective or if they just don’t  _ fit  _ here.

\--

He goes home for Christmas.

Outer Banks is grey and cold, and his parents pick him up from the pier after a rough ferry crossing. He’s missed them a lot, and indulges his mom’s hugs and his dad’s questions while they feed him a late lunch of all his home-cooked favourites. As his dad moves on from quizzing him about friends to more pointed enquiries about schoolwork, it’s almost like he’s never been away.

The sun goes down, and he pulls his coat back on and heads down to The Wreck.

It’d usually be closed during the off-season, but on a Saturday Kie’s dad sometimes opens the ground floor for locals. Sure enough, it glows like a friendly beacon in the darkness, with kook families scattered about making merry. There are paper snowflakes and Christmas lights taped to the windows, and the kooks lounge in their chairs in a way that says they’ll be there all night. Kie’s dad loves that, because there are only so many people on the island with the money to go out in the middle of winter, and the longer they linger the more high-margin alcohol they put away. 

Kie’s waitressing. Her pretty hair is tied back and she’s wearing jeans and a white top. He remembers kissing her, the spark and hope, and how it still never went anywhere between them. After that night, her parents kept her home under a close watch, and by the time she was allowed out again - well. It would have felt awkward ditching JJ, who post-John B had become Pope’s part-time shadow. Kie - like that - became a daydream, a fantasy. 

She carries plates to one table, and gestures to another that she’ll be right with them. He leans on a fence post to watch.

“College turned you into some kind of creeper?”

A familiar arm hooks around his neck, and he finds himself fighting off JJ, intent on - something. Giving him a noogie, perhaps, or maybe it was meant to be a weird sort of aggressive hug. He grins as they separate.

“Merry Christmas, JJ.”

“Yeah, yeah.  _ Fuck  _ it’s cold, stay here if you want but I’m going in.”

JJ hops up the steps and swings open the door. It bangs closed again before he can reach it, so he has the full experience of opening it himself - the warmth and sound and scent of fry oil hitting him right in the face. 

“Yo Kie!” JJ shouts across the restaurant. “Look who I found!”

He feels that spark again, as she turns to look and her face lights up. It’s a familiar want, full of affection. She pulls him in for a tight hug, and then slaps him on the arm. “Why didn’t you say you were getting back today? Dad!” she calls, not waiting for an answer. “I’m taking my break! Can we get some food?”

Kie’s dad rolls his eyes, but waves her off with a nod - perhaps he breathes easier now Kie is mostly grown, enrolled in college, and less in danger of being pulled from the rails by wayward friends.

“He’s only doing it because of you,” JJ says, kicking him as they crowd onto one of the empty tables. “Whenever I turn up it’s always ‘we’re not a charity JJ’, and ‘get that kid off my steps, Kie’.”

“He loves you deep down,” he teases.

“ _ Very  _ deep down… maybe,” agrees Kie. Their eyes catch and he can’t help grinning; this feels even more like home than his house did, and they’ve slipped back into their dynamic like nothing could change it.

The fried fish is as delicious as ever, and JJ has smuggled in a hip flask he uses to doctor their cokes. It’s all exactly the same, right down to the yawning absence occupying the fourth seat. His gaze lands on it more than is natural, and he knows Kie looks too often as well. JJ doesn’t look at it at all.

\--

He really means to go back again for summer. Three whole months of surfing and drinking, running the town with JJ and Kie again - it sounds like heaven. His professor pushes him to apply for this perfect internship opportunity though, and he fills in the form because it’s never going to come through - only it does. It’s three months of paid work (a shit wage, but still actual money) and more than that - really,  _ really  _ good experience. He can’t turn it down.

At Christmas, he gets terrible scheduling luck with exams right up to the 23rd and classes starting again on the 2nd. He searches out Greyhound timetables, but the travel time will mean less than a week at home and the ticket prices are astronomical. In the end, he tucks the money away and prepares for a Raleigh-based holiday season. He’ll get ahead on a few essays and hook up a Zoom link for Christmas day. Better to go home in summer anyway, when there’ll be time to spare, no exams looming, and Outer Banks in the sunshine instead of the rain.

He can’t quite believe it when second year finishes. He moves into an off-campus apartment with Sam and Leigh, and they take what they’re saving on rent and fly to Miami for a dirt cheap package week of sun, sand and sambuca. He looks out at the Bahamas and imagines how they might have stopped off there with a cargo full of gold, if things had worked out. Restocked and refuelled for the final push across the gulf of Mexico. He sits on the sand and Leigh teases him for being a born and bred beach bum afraid of the water. 

He doesn’t know how to tell her he’s not afraid of the sea. Just sad. For what’s beneath it.

Before he knows it, summer is done and he never quite made it home - it slipped away instead in a heat haze of partying and scraping together money bagging groceries at their local K-Mart. Him and Leigh and Sam have settled in now, and they have their routines - he buys their shared food with his discount, Leigh makes a pot of coffee for them to wake up to, and Sam brings home leftovers from the cafe. They all leave the washing up until it resembles a game of Jenga, then argue about who created the most. 

Somehow, he’s already back in the whirlwind, final year, last chance, and so close to everything he always wanted.

\--

It’s just a regular Tuesday. He has his entomology lecture followed by a lab, and then he heads to The Brewstop for coffee with Michael and Chase, because if the three of them don’t rehash what was covered they know it’ll be a fuzzy half-forgotten mess next week. He doesn’t even think to look at his phone until he’s on the bus home.

Thirteen missed calls; eight from JJ, five from Kie. Enough texts and WhatsApps to require multiple scrolls.

_ ANSWER YOUR PHONE _ \- JJ.

_ Fucks sake Pope pick up -  _ Kie.

_ Seriously dude where are you this is BIG -  _ JJ.

_ Are you fuckking kidding right now POPE ANSWER THE PHONE - _ JJ.

_ Call. Us. -  _ Kie.

His stomach drops. He looks frantically around - he’s only minutes from his stop, and makes himself hold on until he can spill out of the doors. Whatever conversation this is, he doesn’t think he wants to have it shoulder to shoulder with elderly ladies and commuters.

His phone buzzes. He watches the picture flash up - it’s JJ pulling a stupid face. It’s from before everything, before John B even mentioned treasure, and the sight of it makes something pull deep in his chest. They were never innocent. Pogues never really are. But even so.

The picture disappears, and a few seconds later another text shows up.

_???!!??? DUDE _ \- JJ

He dings the bell and tumbles out onto the street. It’s cold, even for March, but he doesn’t bother walking, just hits the return call in the middle of the sidewalk. His hand is shaking as he raises the phone to his ear.

“Fucking finally,” he’s greeted with, and for some reason tears spring to his eyes. “Where the  _ fuck _ have you been?!”

“Class,” he chokes out. “What- JJ, what-”

“It’s John B,” JJ says, and his voice is small, breathless, and he can’t tell  _ what  _ about John B - did they - did they find his body? After all this time - it’s been  _ years _ \- “He’s alive. Pope, man, he’s  _ alive _ .”

There’s a scuffle before he can ask, before he can even  _ process _ \- and Kie comes on the line. “Pope?”

“Kie?”

“It’s true,” she sniffles, and he sobs in response.  _ Alive? _ What the  _ fuck?  _ “It’s true, Sarah too, they were rescued, they went after the gold-”

She’s cut off with another wrestling match and when he hears JJ’s breathing again he shouts down the phone, “just put it on speaker, Christ!” The sound changes; a little more muffled but he can hear both of them now, and Kie’s still making those little hitching noises she makes when she’s trying not to break down, and he wishes he could just - just  _ be there _ . “I’m coming home,” he announces, even though he has a tutorial tomorrow he really shouldn’t miss, and they’re in the countdown to final exams - but he can’t be here. He needs to be there, he needs to see John B with his own eyes.

“They’re not here,” JJ says, and his voice sounds a little thick too. He wonders if he’s cried already - like he is now, standing in the damn street - or if he’s holding it back. “They’re not here, there’s no - there’s no point Pope-”

“We know you’re busy-”

“I-” he stops himself. He wants to see them, but it's been… it’s been over a year. Somehow. He’s missed two summers and one winter, and he doesn’t even know if they’re still friends, not really, except he thinks maybe you can’t go through what the three of them did and not end up fused together for life. The four of them. Hell, the five of them.

God they’re  _ alive. _

“We’ll come to you,” says Kie.

“Yeah, I’ve got enough stashed for tickets,” says JJ. “I can pay you two back for once.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he finds himself agreeing. He doesn’t hang up, but he does start walking, and he’s honestly not sure what they talk about. He’s just happy to have that connection open, as he walks down a dirty street hundreds of miles away.

\--

Leigh and Sam talk about their old school friends and always sound half-embarrassed they once cared about these people; now so foreign, so othered. Just warm bodies to drink beer with when they visit their parents. They’re cartoonish in the retelling, two-dimensional puppets playing the parts in stories of first kisses, first dates, and first love. He can’t help thinking:  _ Did you never hold them together when their dad disappeared? Did you never duck bullets as you gunned a boat away? Did you never hug in a hot tub, so careful of bruises and the stories behind them? Did they never go to jail for you? Wouldn’t you tear the world apart for them?  _ He thinks the answers are no, and as much as he likes Leigh and Sam, he sometimes feels slightly sick at their simplicity.

They’re surprised when he tells them JJ and Kie are coming to stay. They don’t even know their names, and it’s a history he has no time and no words to go into. But they’re happy enough to have guests for a couple of nights, especially as it means he tackles the washing up pile without complaining.

He spends the next day fidgeting, unable to concentrate on the tutorial he couldn’t miss.

By the time there’s a knock on the door, he’s exhausted. He still springs to his feet, wrenches it open and - they’re the same. Oh, Kie’s cut her hair and JJ’s got a new rucksack, but they both grin at him in such a familiar way.

Sam’s cooked. They’re a decent cook, a bit of a warlock with the odds and ends their fridge seems to produce, and Kie and JJ are both famished after the bus ride. They eat and chat, and with Sam and Leigh there they all say absolutely nothing about the one thing they can’t stop thinking about. It’s a relief to finish eating, grab some beers, and escape into his room.

“JJ, I figured you and me could share, Kie, Leigh had this blow-up mattress…”

“Pope.” 

They hugged when they arrived, but he stops at Kie’s careful tone and hand on his arm. It’s easy to gather her up again, and he feels JJ latch on to both of them. His shoulders relax for the first time in… months, possibly. “They’re really alive?” he whispers into her shoulder.

“Yeah.”

He laughs, choked. “Fuck,” he hisses.

\--

It feels odd, the three of them shoulder to shoulder staring anxiously at a blank computer screen. He can feel JJ practically vibrating through one leg, his other knee bouncing in agitation. On the other side Kie chews her lip. He sits stock still - he’s well practiced at keeping, or at least looking, calm.

The computer beeps, and they all jump. He leans forward, and clicks the answer button.

It’s them. Their Zoom screen calls them Jake and Sophie, and Sarah’s hair is bright blonde now. John B’s hair is gone, a short back and sides which somehow suits him as much as it jars. They both wear large sunglasses, as if they’ve read one too many articles about facial recognition software.

“Hi,” he says, when no one else speaks.

“Hey,” says John B, and it  _ is  _ him. The voice is the same, and so’s the cut of his jaw - even though now it’s under a three day scruff. He looks older. Mind you, they’ve all changed. It’s been years. JJ’s wrist aches in the stormy weather now, broken twice and healed wrong, and Kie’s moved on from ‘save the dolphins’ wristbands to actual, thought through environmental protection plans with budgets and policy documents. Even he’s changed - no longer as stretched-looking as he was at sixteen, and now dead bodies are just that, not each one wearing the face of - well, but he’s not dead, is he?

“Jo-”

“Jake,” John B interrupts JJ. 

JJ nods sharply, and they all sit and stare in silence again. 

“We got it,” Sarah says suddenly. “The - you know.”

“Yeah,” jumps in John B. “Not the 400, not by the time we’d-” he waves a hand, which could mean anything, “but 200. So with the five way split, that’s-”

“No.”

Everyone turns to look at him. He keeps his eyes on the bottom of the screen, the  _ Jake and Sophie _ . 

“What?”

“Jake, Sophie.” The names sound awkward in his mouth. “You did it. You got it. You spent years of your life on it. What did I do? I went to college.” He can’t take their money. Forty million he’s turning down, but it’s not difficult at all. He never really believed they would make it - not except for that one moment when he ran from his scholarship interview. How long was that? An afternoon? He’s not been sat here waiting for it for years, and he couldn’t - what would he even do with that now? Forty million. He can’t picture it. “It’s yours.”

“Yeah,” adds Kie. “Same, I mean - I don’t,” she tucks her hair behind her ear, with a sheepish sideways glance at him and JJ. “I don’t need it.” She gestures down at herself. “Full kook, right?”

“Kie, no, you’re not - not one of  _ them _ ,” spits JJ, and she reaches her arm around Pope’s back to clap JJ on the shoulder. 

“I know, not like that. But I don’t need it. And Pope’s right, what have I done for it? Just a long couple of days a lifetime ago.”

He can’t tell what John B and Sarah are thinking, hidden behind those ridiculous sunglasses. He feels a bubble of anger, and swallows hard.

“JJ?” asks John B.

The silence stretches. It would change JJ’s life, and of all of them - he’s the most stuck. The fewest prospects, as cruel as it sounds to say it like that. He’s also John B’s best friend, his brother. He’s the one who hollowed out for a whole year after John B died. Forty million. More, with Kie and him out of the pot. JJ could live like a king, and he’d deserve it.

“No.”

Pope double-takes, twisting slightly to see JJ, but he just keeps looking resolutely at the screen and it leaves him staring at the wisps of blond hair around his ear. “JJ, you can, just because-”

“I’m fine.”

“JJ-”

“I mean it, John B.”

John B nods, and they’re still wearing those stupid sunglasses so he can’t tell what he’s thinking. But he sees Sarah shift, and thinks she might have taken his hand out of frame. He does the same for JJ, without thinking about it, and only realises when fingers grip tightly on his.

“How are you, anyway?” Kie asks lamely into the lull. “Any other news?”

Sarah grins, and says nothing but raises a hand into shot. He’s not sure why, except then Kie gasps and he realises the ring Sarah’s wearing must not be just a way to spend money but there’s meaning behind it - that’s -

“You got married!” Kie exclaims.

He feels kind of hot and cold at once, at the thought that John B got married without any of them there. He’d never thought about it of course - they’re all way too young - but JJ. He should have been the best man. And Kie as bridesmaid, and he supposes he’d have been some kind of usher. All of them done up in stuffy suits down on the beach in summer, jealous of Kie’s floaty dress as she wafted around, teasing them.

Except it didn’t happen that way. It happened on a different, unknown beach, just the two of them, a couple of witnesses and a fancy bar with overpriced cocktails for the reception. It should have been Kie’s dad catering, a barbecue, and there should have been buckets of ice water keeping the beers cool in the shade. It should have been thronged with people and gone on late into the night until someone lit a bonfire and someone else thought skinny dipping sounded like a good idea.

He makes his way through congratulations and queries about the big day, although he’s aware he’s leaving Kie to shoulder most of it. JJ is useless; all he can tell is that he’s listening, with the occasional nod thrown in, like someone’s hit the mute button.

They sign off eventually - the evening has grown dark around them, and Sarah can’t control her yawns. John B gives them all his new phone number, and they ping him theirs back still connected by the video call, then the screen goes dark. He’s not sure how long the three of them sit there staring, but it’s long enough that his computer puts itself in sleep mode. He closes the lid and leans over the edge of the bed to deposit it on the floor.

“Can I sleep up here with you tonight?” asks Kie.

There’s room for three. “Yeah.”

\--

He has no class the next morning. He still wakes up early, and disentangles an arm to scratch at his nose where Kie’s hair tickles it. She’s not changed her shampoo, he realises, the subtle scent of flowers burned deep into his brain - something he hadn’t even known he remembered. 

“Pope?” 

JJ sounds awake already, like he’s been lying here for hours. Maybe he found it hard to sleep. It less explains the way his arm is slung over Pope’s waist, or the way his hand settles on bedsheets just centimetres from his chest and keeps him boxed in against the boy behind him.

“Yeah?”

“He didn’t tell us for so long.”

“No.”

He pulls the hand closer at that, and feels the rustle of covers shifting as JJ presses forward. He’s never really wondered about guys, not in the way girls fill his thoughts sometimes - but there’s something right about the feel of JJ settling snug against his back, and the way their fingers interlock. JJ’s tactile, he always has been, but this is worlds apart from a running jump into a piggyback, or even an arm slung around his neck. It still doesn’t make the hurt better, or dissolve the kernel of shamed anger that’s set up in his chest - but it bleeds the tension from his body and lets him sink into a half-sleep again.

\--

When they wake up properly, no one mentions it. Kie sees them, of course she does - but she doesn’t spring from the bed or ask questions. He’s glad, because he doesn’t think he could handle her pulling away right now, much as he’s not seen her in so long. Now that they're here, in his new life, it feels like sand filling up all the gaps he hadn’t realised were there. It makes him present, finally, and seeing the city through new eyes.

They go sightseeing, taking in all the places and activities he hadn’t thought of getting around to these last few years, but somehow with the Pogues at his side again the world feels open to opportunity. Sometimes he walks with his hand in Kie’s, sometimes JJ does. Sometimes they knock arms with every stride, or JJ slings an arm around his shoulders to drag him down to look at some piece of graffiti.

They paid for the bus tickets, so at lunchtime, he treats them both to a burger and fries. 

“I’m angry at John B,” he says finally, when he thinks not mentioning it will fuse his mouth shut forever more.

“I’m fucking furious,” replies JJ, then stuffs the last of his burger in his mouth. He doesn’t look furious. It’s not like the JJ of old, who would be breaking things right now. But he is kind of fidgety - even more than normal - and when he meets Kie’s eyes she shrugs.

“You can be glad he’s alive and pissed off at the same time,” she says, dragging a fry through a pool of ketchup. “I think it’d be weird if we weren’t. He was dead for years.” 

Except he wasn’t. And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? They all mourned, while he got rich, got married, and got his fucking hair cut like a goddamned kook.

\--

JJ and Kie have to leave. Their tickets are timed ones - cheaper that way - and Kie has classes of her own to get back to. He skips his lab to see them off at the bus depot. Kie clutches him tight. JJ hovers like he’s not sure he’s getting on the bus at all. He waits until the last second, then leaps up to follow Kie, snarking at the driver and knocking people with his duffle until she pulls him into the seat next to hers. He waves as they pull away.

He doesn't think it’s meant to feel like this. Like taking a knife to the stomach. He’d planned to make his afternoon lecture, but he just goes home and falls onto his bed instead. The pillow still smells a little bit like Kie’s shampoo.

“You alright?” 

He turns, twisting the covers into disarray. Sam stands in the doorway, a mug in each hand. They deposit one on the bedside table, and Pope stares at it.

“Are you and Kie… you know. Together?”

He shakes his head dumbly, then tries to pull himself together. It’s like building a sandcastle out of dry sand. “No. Once, a lifetime ago. We tried it, but... no.”

Sam nods. “So you and JJ then?”

“What? No.”

“Oh.” They study him carefully. Pope sits up, and smiles past the gasping hollow in his chest. He’s not sure how successful it is. “Tea,” they say finally, with a little gesture towards the mug. He picks it up dutifully. 

He holds it until it’s long gone cold.

\--

The knife doesn’t go away. Neither does the hollow. But he gets better at ignoring both, because the final semester of his degree is a whirlwind. He has no time for anything but work and study, a thousand and one things to do and just three months to do them in. Everyone said final year was bad. He hadn’t realised he’d barely have time to think.

JJ and Kie get relegated to WhatsApp conversations. They have a full Pogues group, John B and Sarah added under their silly pseudonyms - he should probably just be glad it’s not Vlad and whoever - but it's not that one that pings daily and slices neat pinpoint sutures into his heart. It’s the other one. The one with just him, Kie and JJ, where he’s more a silent watcher than an active participant but still covets each word like treasure.

Or, well, more than treasure. He gave that up didn’t he? Their message history is somehow worth more to him than gold bars.

John B calls one afternoon, and he doesn't have time for it but the man is legally dead so he answers the phone.

“I’ve got an idea,” he says, before Pope has a chance to say hello. The familiar old spontaneity makes him smile. “You don’t want your share, that’s fine. But let me pay your college fees.”

“Jo- Jake,” he corrects. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Pope, it’s… this sounds awful, but it’s small change. I’d have just done it, if I could, but I need your college details.”

“Really?”

He’d be a fool to turn it down. A goddamn fool. Everyone in his class wears their fees like an iron necklace. To have them paid off - no strings - is literally the dream.

“Really really.”

He only got three hours sleep last night. He turned in a paper this morning that’s worth eight per cent of his final grade. He’s not even sure how many coffees he’s had. This might all be some kind of weird, lucid dream. He tells himself that’s why he reels off the information, head under his bed pawing through paperwork for his student finance number, without thinking it through. John B rings off and he faceplants on top of the sheets and conks out for twelve straight hours.

He wakes up to an email from student finance; a big black zero and a congratulatory message. He’s got two weeks of exams and then he was heading home. He was gonna have to work in his dad’s shop while he filed applications for something better. Try and make ends meet while he fought to make the last three years mean something.

He was gonna see JJ and Kie.

Zero.

It’s like the strings tying him to the island have been cut. He feels loose, a kite flapping in the breeze and slipped from the hand of a child.

It’s not a nice feeling.

\--

He buries it down, because that’s what he does - or at least, it’s what he does when he can’t afford to freak out. Because this whole education may have been free now, but that doesn't mean much if he flunks out on his final exams.

He still mostly ignores the WhatsApp pings. Kie and JJ start calling him out on it, and then he adds something in - something throwaway, a complaint about the amount of revision he needs to do - because he doesn’t know how to tell them he caved and took a cut of the treasure that wasn’t his. Took the bond that tied him to the Outer Banks and sliced it loose. 

It would be one thing, if he could get them both out of his head. It would be another, if the dreams he woke from daily were full of surfing and boats and haring round the island in John B’s old van. He can explain that; standing at the precipice of graduation, everything changing, it makes sense he’d find comfort in the familiar. But the dreams aren’t all waves and fishing lines. They’re action replays of his kiss with Kie, except this time they don’t stop - and that would be one thing again, old but weirdly familiar longing from senior year - except in the new dream-kiss there’s always JJ’s hand warm on the back of his neck, or looped around his waist. His eyes hot as they sweep down Kie’s curves. Sometimes he sleeps long enough to break away from Kie, and somehow his subconscious has soaked up enough from seeing JJ with the tourons to  _ know  _ how he’d kiss - or at least have a pretty good idea. 

It leaves him shaking. Not even the gay thing, although that’s kind of new, but the fact he’s torn up on his two best friends. Either way he’s gonna rip their little group apart, and he doesn’t even  _ know. _

He blocks the phantom smell of Kie’s hair, the ghost touch of JJ’s arm, and buries himself in bugs, bones and blood.

\--

Leigh finishes her exams first. Pope’s is the last, and she and Sam meet him at the door as he stumbles out. It could have been worse, he tells himself. He’s almost eighty per cent sure that some of the questions were mostly half-way right. A cup is pushed into his hand, and he drinks and splutters.

“Neat vodka?” he coughs. “It’s barely noon.”

“It's the end of exams,” Leigh corrects, slinging an arm around his waist. He lets himself be dragged out into bright June sunshine and takes another, more cautious sip. “Time has no meaning, except it is most definitely time to get drunk.”

“Hear hear,” Sam chimes in, stealing the cup and draining it. They dig around in Leigh’s backpack and then surreptitiously refill. Pope ducks into a corner store and buys a litre of coke and a share bag of chips. They meander to the nearest park and flake out of the grass; he watches an  _ Anux junius  _ land lazily on a flower then spin away again, and closes his eyes.

It’s summer again. The light end of it, the side that promises many sun-filled days to come. He lets it warm him, inside and out, the old half-forgotten excitement of a summer beckoning with nothing but sand and surf and days on the boat and his friends.

He cracks an eye. He’s lucky to have Sam and Leigh. He loves them both, but the contract on their place is almost up. Sam’s heading back to Springfield, Illinois and Leigh to Roanoke. He doesn’t think it will slice through him like leaving the Cut did.

“So.” Leigh flails an arm and hits him in the stomach. He’s not sure if it’s accidental or not, but he gives up the coke bottle - now liberally infused with vodka. “You heading back to the island?”

His stomach flips. “I don’t know,” he answers truthfully.

“I thought you were working at your dad’s?”

“I came into some inheritance,” he says hesitantly. It’s almost the truth, after all. “It’s given me some options.”

“I’m sorry.” Leigh lays a hand gently on his arm, then gives him back the coke bottle. “I didn’t realise.”

“I didn’t know him well,” he says; he’s hardly cut up about the death of this fictitious person. No, that was all long ago and distinctly unneeded, as it turned out. The last thing he needs is Leigh feeling guilty, or casting a pall over this bright, free day. “A great-uncle, I only met him a couple of times as a kid. I guess he liked the fact I was doing something with my life. He paid off-” he hesitates, rejigs. No one really has long-lost family that can just drop enough cash to pay off student loans in one swoop, “-some of my fees. It means my repayments will be a lot lower, anyway.”

“And it means the drinks are on you,” teases Sam. “Lucky bastard.” They fold the chip packet into a neat triangle. “Speaking of, it’s nearly one. Lunch? That barbecue place serves cheap beer, and not all of us can afford to cultivate expensive tastes.”

After a leisurely lunch they drop into a bar, then meet up with a few of Leigh’s lecture buddies for more drinks in the park. The aimless time-killing reminds him of days on the island, although there are more cars and fewer boats, more people and fewer familiar sights, even now, three years after he started calling this city his. The floaty feeling is the same. Everything feels far away, like it used to when he ended up half-high from passive smoking JJ’s weed.

They head home early, but it’s allowed, Leigh insists, with day drinking. It might only be seven, but it’s like a normal night out carrying on until four or five in the morning. They grab fries and a pizza to share, knocking elbows in the chicken shop and trying to hide their drunkenness from the family at the next table. By the time they reach their front door, he feels loose and easy and ready for some mindless TV before an early night.

He stops.

“Oh hey!” cries Leigh. She’s a happy drunk, catches Kie in a tight hug, then releases her and stumbles over to offer the same to JJ. He meets Pope’s eye over her shoulder, smirking, and Pope gapes and shifts from foot to foot.

They’re here. He didn’t know they were coming. He - oh God. He pulls out his phone. It’s still turned off from his exam, and when he presses the button it flares to life, notifications popping and building too fast to read. The last one hovers on top -  _ guess you’re out celebrating. We’ll wait, see you soon. _

“I - sorry,” he says, waving the phone awkwardly. “I didn’t-”

“Next time we’ll give you more than half a day’s notice,” Kie promises with a smile that lets him know he’s forgiven. He finds himself wrapped up, her soft body pressed in a long line all down his front. He breathes deeply, then laughs when a pair of arms snake around his neck from behind, and he’s suddenly got JJ clinging to his back with his knees.

“Nice to see you too. Both of you,” he adds, rolling his eyes with Kie at JJ. But he curls his hands around JJ’s thighs, holding him, steadying him into a proper piggyback. They troop inside like that, and he’s more than a little drunk, so he stumbles and Kie pushes him upright again and JJ jumps down to investigate the state of their fridge and he flexes his hands, suddenly empty.

“I know it’s stupid o’clock, but I’m going to bed,” announces Sam. 

Leigh frowns, then pouts, then seems to realise something and nods vigorously. “Yes, me too. Day drinking, you know. Knocks me right out.”

“They’re not subtle,” Kie remarks, as soon as they’re alone in the kitchen. He doesn’t much care, watching JJ uncap three beers. They tap the bottlenecks together in a cheers. “How did the exams go?”

He shrugs. They feel a long way away, truthfully, and he can’t really remember what answers he put. “Okay,” he says, and swigs his beer. The movement makes his head spin. Maybe he shouldn’t have any more.

“We’re not here about that, any-” JJ catches Kie’s dirty look and cuts himself off. “I _ mean,” _ he restarts, “great, well done man. Of course we care about this shit. But are you comin’ back? You could live with me. You don’t have to doss with Heyward again, I’ve got the chateau.”

Of course he's got the chateau; JJ basically moved in after John B went missing. Over the years he’s fixed the windows and generally taken better care of it than John B ever did, even if he also sometimes kicks a hole in the door or throws a bottle at the wall. The next day it’ll be carefully patched and repaired, and maybe he’s spent too long with JJ but he can’t help but think the scars give it character.

Except JJ is practically vibrating, which means he’s either about to kick off or he’s excited, and the sparkle in his eyes and big grin speaks to the latter. 

“The chateau?” he asks.

“Mine,” JJ whispers, awed. Then he springs to his feet, pacing the kitchen, and Kie takes pity on them both.

“A mysterious will turned up; in the event of John B’s death, all his property passed to JJ,” she says. “It’s all a few years late, but apparently it’s ironclad, despite the fact that sixteen year old John B somehow also bought a brand new boat.”

“It’s awesome,” JJ chips in.

“And he tried to pay for my college, but,” she shrugs, “between working at The Wreck and my parents, there wasn’t anything left to pay. He made a sizable contribution to the North Carolina Conservation Network instead.”

“He paid off my fees.”

She nods, finishes her beer, then steals his. 

“We can’t be angry anymore, can we?” he asks.

“Money can’t fix things.”

“Spoken like a true kook Kie, what’s happened to you?” he teases. “Gone native?”

“It’s fixed this, for me.” He studies her face; too calm, really. “Or time did,” she adds, with a sad sort of smile. He offers her a small one in return. 

He’s not sure if it’s that look or his blood alcohol level, but he admits, “I feel cut free. Drifting.”

“Hm?”

“I had a plan. And now…” He grabs her empty bottle and fusses at the label with a thumbnail. It’s a habit older than the drinking of the beer itself - displacement activity - he used to take them from his dad and do the same thing. He remembers JJ catching him at it at their first kegger, telling him it was a symbol of sexual frustration. How he’d stopped, embarrassed, until John B whacked JJ round the head and called him an idiot and peeled the whole label off his own beer before tearing it into shreds that littered the sand. 

“Don’t decide today,” JJ says suddenly. He hadn't thought he was even listening; he’s made himself and Kie sandwiches from Sam’s leftovers, and talks through a mouthful. God help him that the sight just elicits a stab of fondness, instead of disgust. “A future blank and clear, that’s the dream man. Live life the JJ way.”

“Liar,” says Kie. “Just yesterday you were saying you’re gonna set yourself up as a tourist charter boat.”

“So?”

“So that’s a plan, dumbass.”

“Living on the waves, days off whenever I want - sounds like a clear future to me.”

Kie shakes her head. “Whatever.”

They end up on the couch, despite Pope feeling like he could sink into bed sheets and never rise again. He finds himself propped between the two of them instead, some terrible Netflix film about incompetent spies playing out on the TV. Kie snuggles into his side, and maybe she’s been hitting the gym because she’s more forceful than he remembers. He slumps sideways eventually under the onslaught, and finds himself practically lying on JJ. 

“Hey,” JJ says, eyes still on the screen. His hand falls, though, and he hadn’t even noticed that it was along the back of the sofa, but now it loops around Kie’s shoulder, holding her down, keeping him enclosed in the middle, and there’s no other word for it - the three of them are basically cuddling. 

He remembers this. He remembers Pogues tied up in each other, limbs everywhere. He remember’s JJ’s arm slung around his neck, and shoving at John B’s legs when he tried to take over the best sofa cushion by sneak attack, and forgetting to be as careful of Kie as they should be, because touching a girl the way they all touched each other might give the wrong impression. Or the right one, technically, given they were all halfway in love with her, and teenagers, and it doesn’t take a lot. 

“So will you come back, Pope?” Kie’s voice is casual but she’s too still, and there’s no hiding the way JJ tenses underneath him. “There’s a charity that works on ocean biodiversity. They have an opening for a junior in their seaweed department-”

“-fancy,” scoffs JJ.

“-and it might not be  _ sexy,”  _ Kie emphasises, the word sending tingles through him, “but it’s important. All the big fish and mammals hang on the food supply chain, and several seaweed species are indicator species, which means-”

“-shut up and let him answer, Kie.”

“Which means I’m hanging around,” she finishes.

Silence falls, and they watch Henry Cavill shoot his way out of an underground base.

“We’ve done it alone for three years Pope,” JJ murmurs. “You don’t have to come home.”

_ Home.  _ That’s it, isn’t it? The Outer Banks is home, the island is home - and he might not care all that much about cokes and fries at The Wreck, and the beach lost its shine after John B - but Kie and JJ. They matter. They’re his home, however they’ll have him.

“There are dead people everywhere,” he realises roughly. Kie laughs, and he realises what he’s said, like he’s some kind of  _ Sixth Sense  _ psychic - “I mean, they’ll need pathologists-”

He’s cut off. Kie’s lips are soft and slick with balm; something that smells fruity but doesn’t taste it. She tastes instead of beer, and the cheese sandwich JJ made for her, and said like that it should be off-putting, but it’s  _ Kie. _ He wraps one hand around her arm, the other cupping the nape of her neck, and she kisses him harder, pressing him down, down into - into JJ. He breaks away.

“Don’t mind me.” 

He doesn't sound upset, but JJ often doesn’t, not with Pogues - not when it  _ really  _ matters. 

“JJ-”

“Not if you, uh…”

“He means he wants to kiss you too,” says Kie, and his heart thumps like a drum.

“What?” They can’t mean he gets to have both. That doesn’t just  _ happen.  _ That’s not what people do, and besides - he doesn’t get that lucky. If it’s for anyone, it’s for people like John B, the dreamers chasing their pot of gold. Not people who pick a life at fourteen and just keep working to make it real.

“He wants to kiss you too,” she repeats. He sits up, dumb, and Kie scrambles back to give him room. He twists to look at JJ. 

“JJ?”

He’s biting his lip. “I mean, not if you don’t want to man, this ain’t, I dunno, some kind of  _ condition _ on coming back-”

He shuts JJ up the way Kie stopped him. There’s a moment’s brain freeze when he realises what he’s doing, what this means, and then he’s completely taken over. This is JJ. And that’s Kie’s hand snaking into his own, a grounding that keeps him tethered, lets him break away with his breath coming short, turn to Kie for a peck that’s more smile than kiss, then back to JJ.

He gets to have this. Somehow.

“Really?” he asks eventually. He’s still drunk, and he’s never dreamt about them both here, in Raleigh - but maybe it is a dream. Maybe he’ll wake up and still have his last exam to take and a phone full of unanswered messages. 

“Really,” Kie whispers. “Come home with us.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

\--

He still has to wave Kie and JJ off at the bus depot two days later - he’s got a part time job to quit and three years of life to wrap up - but it doesn’t feel like such a wrench this time. Maybe it’s the two of them facetiming him as soon as the bus pulls away, or maybe it’s the knowledge that he’ll be following them in little more than a week.

He gets home and moves into the chateau with JJ. Kie has a little flat above a shop on the main street, but she spends more nights sprawled on the futon listening to the waves than she does in town. They surf in the evenings, and go fishing on JJ’s new boat, and Pope slinks back to his parents’ house to use the faster internet for job applications.

Soon enough he finds work. It’s entry level, technically below what he should be doing given his degree, but it’s the right field and there are advancement opportunities. Kie starts her charity job and somehow builds JJ a website on the side, and Pope vetoes his first choice of slogan  _ (Get Wet on JJ Tours) _ and then helps him deliver the new leaflets to hotels. He argues with his dad for days and promises to cover Friday evenings free for a month, and eventually an A3 ‘JJ’s Tours’ poster appears in the window of the store. It’s worth the nights of free labour for the way JJ’s jaw drops as they walk past.

They fall into a routine. Pope drops Kie off at work one day then heads across to the morgue. JJ takes the two of them home by boat, packed in with tourists if it’s a sunny day, and sometimes Kie will get up and give a lecture on the conservation of the area which has JJ rolling his eyes fondly. The tourists lap it up, though. The next day Kie drives instead, and they stick the saved fuel money in a rainy day fund. He thinks maybe one day soon they’ll take a trip to the Bahamas and look up John B and Sarah.

They don’t tell anyone about the three of them, but they don’t exactly hide it either. Luckily they've always been tied too close together, and most islanders put it down to losing their friends so dramatically; bonds forged by tragedy in youth. They don’t look closely enough, or care enough, to see the little touches that speak to something more.

He wonders sometimes how he got so lucky. How a half paranoid, sometimes neurotic, nerdy poor black kid managed to get here. He lives with the two people he loves most in the world, metres away from a surfer’s paradise. He has a job he finds endlessly interesting, free time to spare, his family nearby (but far enough to discourage random visits), and he’s not even saddled with debt. 

“Hey. Whatcha thinking?” 

Kie folds down next to him on the sand. She hands him the mug in her left hand, and he takes a sip. Coffee, well sugared, just how he likes it. The sun’s barely up, streaking the sky to shades of pink and yellow, and the waves roll endlessly into shore. JJ’s out there - there’s nothing surfable, but sometimes he just floats, belly down on the board, and drifts. He’s always calmer after time out on the water, however that comes. 

“Just how lucky I got. All this. JJ. You.”

“Yeah?” She nudges him with a shoulder and a familiar, pretty smile. “I think it was me that got lucky.”

He huffs a laugh, and downs his coffee before planting the mug in the sand. He strips off his shirt and gets to his feet, turning back to haul Kie up as well.

“What?”

“C’mon, you know you want to.”

Soon they’ll have to go inside, wash off sand and get ready for work. But for now there’s nowhere he needs to be, and nowhere he’d rather be. Just Kie’s hand warm in his, the feel of sand beneath his feet as they run into the breaking waves and JJ, grinning at them from astride a surfboard like he has a thousand times before. And, if he has any say in it, will a thousand times again.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! If you did, please consider leaving a comment or kudos, and you might like to check out my other JJ/Kie/Pope fic [Settle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24643012). If polyamory generally is your thing, you can find more of that in the White Collar and Endeavour fandoms on my author page.


End file.
